


Easily Learned

by elumish



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Death Eaters, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 08:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10872963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: Sirius and Snape would hate to be compared, I think. They would hate to think that they have something in common, that their paths were at all the same, but the way I see it, they were.





	Easily Learned

Sirius and Snape would hate to be compared, I think. They would hate to think that they have something in common, that their paths were at all the same, but the way I see it, they were.

Sirius Black, the bad son, raised Dark and forcing himself willfully, belligerently, into the Light at eleven, tearing himself away from his family at sixteen. It’s easy to think he would have had the cruelty to be a Death Eater, with the way he talks to Kreacher. Kreacher may not be human, but he is sentient, angry and bigoted and trapped alone in a moldering house for a dozen years. Deserving of some respect, or at least pity, because he is alive and aware. Bigotry is easily learned and rarely unlearned, and Sirius grew up around bigotry. He probably never met someone who wasn’t like that, who wasn’t cruel and capricious and a little bit insane, until he met James on the train, his point of light, the person who really showed him things could be different. Toujours pur says the House of Black.

Severus Snape, the bad son, raised Dark and slipping reluctantly, silently, into the Light at twenty, tearing himself away from the closest thing he had to a family while letting them think he was still one of them. It’s clear that he had the cruelty to be a Death Eater, and that never changed. For him, it did not seem to be about purity, or blood; he hated. He hated. He was angry, and he hated, and he enjoyed causing pain, and didn’t know how not to. At eleven he knew more curses than most seventh-years; that had to come from somewhere. Causing pain is easily learned and rarely unlearned, and Snape grew up around pain. And when there was a threat against the one point of light in his life, even if he had forced her away, he turned spy and traitor and teacher to children he abhorred to try to save her life, even at the expense of her husband and son. This does not make him good.

In the end, turning Light trapped both of them in a prison of their own making, misguided, misplaced, Sirius in Azkaban for a crime he did not commit, but also for his recklessness, for his unthinking disregard for planning or rational thought when he had lost anything, Snape in Hogwarts, little older than the children he has to teach, and we all know he would have left if he could, because he hated the lot of them, and so he must have been trapped, trapped by his debt to Dumbledore or the way it made him untouchable to the Ministry or the knowledge that if he did not watch over these children they would become him one day, cruel and bitter and trapped.

In the end, turning Light killed the both of them, Sirius because if he had been a Death Eater he would have been protected, trained, Voldemort’s right-hand man, quick on his feet and quicker with his wand, tempering the insanity of his cousin, with just enough reckless disregard for his own life that he would have been great, but instead he was weak, trapped and restless, dying saving untrained children who had no business being where they were, Snape because he played the game well, so well that he managed to kill one of the only men who had ever cared about him, a great man who would not have allowed himself to be killed otherwise, and that killing, that mercy killing by a man who when Dark had even less use for mercy than when he was Light, it led to his death.

They were not the same man. Sirius was a good man, if bigoted, trapped in a mindset a decade out of date with no way to change, a shadow of his former self, of the self he should have been. Snape was not a good man, would never have been a good man, but he might have been a great one. History never repeats itself, but it rhymes.


End file.
